Residents of the Coachella Valley were unable to feel the tremors of yesterday’s magnitude 5.2 earthquake, which occurred about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Bakersfield.
However, some of those affected received an early warning through the mobile app MyShake. Development of the app, which was developed by the University of California at Berkeley, began in 2011.
The university is partnering with CalTech and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). It is also funded by the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), making the MyShake app available for free on mobile devices.
Richard Allen is director of UC Berkeley’s seismology laboratory and oversees the MyShake program. He compares the ability to warn people in advance of an earthquake to magic: “I mean, it’s magic. I mean, it’s really quite remarkable. The reaction of most people is when they get the first warning: they get a notification on their phone.”
In fact, a network of USGS sensors, called ShakeAlert sensors, detect earthquakes and immediately notify users when a shaking event is detected.
“When an earthquake starts, it starts at a specific point underground, so if we have sensors that are closer to the earthquake than an individual user, we can detect the earthquake before people feel the tremors,” Allen explains.
However, many of the Coachella Valley residents I spoke to today had either not heard of the app or had not tried it yet.
Allen says the benefits of the MyShake app aren’t limited to earthquake alerts; the data collected from users’ phones also helps with research. “They actually contribute to our research efforts to better understand earthquakes in the future. So there’s a little bit of give and a little bit of take and people seem to really appreciate that,” Allen says.
Regardless of the data, however, Allen admits that seismologists like him are unable to predict When the next big earthquake. Instead, he calls on the public to campaign for earthquake-proof buildings.
“I expect, unfortunately, that there will be a major earthquake in California in my lifetime,” Allen warns. “We all have a responsibility to think about the buildings we live and work in and to push for them to be safe, earthquake-proof. They will not collapse during the earthquake, because it is collapsing buildings that kill people. It is not the earthquake, it is the buildings.”
